Ursula von der Leyen

Ursula von der Leyen (8 October 1958-) was a CDU member of the Bundestag from Lower Saxony from 27 September 2009, Defense Minister of Germany from 17 December 2013 to 17 July 2019 (succeeding Thomas de Maiziere and preceding Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer), and President of the European Commission from 1 November 2019 (succeeding Jean-Claude Juncker).

Biography
Ursula Albrecht was born in Ixelles, Belgium in 1958, the daughter of politician Ernst Albrecht, and a member of a prominent German family. In 1971, the family moved to Lehrte, Hanover, West Germany, and she went on to marry a physician from a prominent silk merchant family. In 1978, she left the University of Gottingen for London to flee an attempted Red Army Faction kidnap plot against her, and she lived under the alias "Rose Ladson" while under the protection of Scotland Yard. From 1988 to 1992, she worked as an assistant physician at Hanover, and she lived in Stanford, California from 1992 to 1996 while her husband was a professor at Stanford University. She joined the CDU in 1990 and became active in politics in 1999, entering local Hanover politics in 2001. She was elected to the Lower Saxony Landtag in 2003, and she went on to serve as Family Affairs and Youth Minister under Angela Merkel from 2005 to 2009, when she was elected to the Bundestag. From 2009 to 2013, she served as Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, and she cultivated the image of being the social conscience of the CDU, helping Merkel move the party towards the center and supporting affirmative action for women on company boards, gay rights, and a nationwide minimum wage. She also helped Filipino healthcare workers find employment in Germany due to a shortage of skilled workers. In 2013, she became Germany's first female Defense Minister, overseeing the withdrawal of German troops from the Afghanistan War (despite opposing the withdrawal) and supporting German military intervention in the Malian Civil War. In 2019, she stepped down as Defense Minister to become the new President of the European Commission, the first woman to hold that position.